“Winning with VUCA – Innovation and Strategies”

Two-Day National Conference

2nd & 3rd March 2015

Jain University, SCMS, Jayanagar Campus, Bangalore

It’s become a trendy managerial acronym: VUCA, short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, and a catchall for “Hey, it’s crazy out there!” It’s also misleading: VUCA conflates four distinct types of challenges that demand four distinct types of responses. That makes it difficult to know how to approach a challenging situation and easy to use VUCA as a crutch, a way to throw off the hard work of strategy and planning—after all, you can’t prepare for a VUCA world, right?

The Two-Day National Conference on “Winning with VUCA – Innovation and Strategies”, held on March 2nd and 3rd 2015, at Jain University, Bangalore, presented by iNurture Education Solutions, had some of the best known business and scholarly minds in town pondering over this question.

The dignitaries and delegates were welcomed by Dr Rajdeep K Manwani, Coordinator, Department of Commerce, Jain University with great eloquence and light humour setting the stage for a charged conference to follow.

Guest of Honor – Dr N.V.H Krishnan, Registrar, Jain University highlighted key areas of disruption in our lives at the personal, social and business level and also suggested language can be a way to stay true to our culture.

Mr. Ashwin Ajila, Founder & Managing Director, iNurture Education Solutions, highlighted the need for such a conference and the effort that has gone behind it and wished the conference great success.

Keynote Speaker – Winning with VUCA – Mr Anand Sudarshan, Founder & Director, Sylvant Advisors Private Ltd – set the stage for the conference by focusing on mindsets and attitudes needed to deal with factors such as “Democratization of aspirations”; “Road less travelled” to “Creating own roads”; “Scarcity Gen vs. Abundance Gen”; “Teaching tools to also teaching techniques”; “Differentiated thinking to stay relevant especially as related semester systems, annual enrolments, pedagogy, delivery channels etc.”

PLENARY SESSION 1 / Day 1 March 2, 2015: VUCA IN DIFFERENT INDUSTRIES.

VUCA & Services: Mr. K Ramakrishnan, President – Marketing, Future Lifestyle Fashions Limited, exhorted the audience of youngsters a) be optimistic b) as a brand don’t be afraid of being a pushover thereby empowering the consumer more c) be part of the consumer narrative to stay relevant and communicate meaningfully – notions practiced at CCD resulting in a FB fan base of over 2 million and of course 1500 stores in 15 years – truly “Lots can happen over coffee”.

VUCA & Infrastructure: Mr. Venkata Girish, Head – Business Strategy, GMR, provided a bird’s eye view of challenges of infrastructure sector often involving “changing tyres while continuing to fly” – a good example is how airports transition from old to new without disruption of flights; also how simple decisions like marble or carpet for airport flooring can lead to supply issues and the hunt from Kashmir to Istanbul.

VUCA &Education: Mr. R Lakshminarayanan, Chief Learning Officer, iNurture Education Solutions Pvt. Ltd, elucidated on the tension that exists in expectation from each of the three key stakeholders in education – student, University and industry – making conflicting demands on each other e.g. students lack interest to attend classes vs. Universities’ insistence on 75% attendance; the knowing-doing-being paradigm where industry wants more ‘doing’ and University is focused on ‘knowing’; and the challenge of designing assessments and metrics that works for student, University and industry.

PLENARY SESSION 2 / DAY 2 MARCH 3, 2015: EMERGING CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN SECTOR AND BUSINESSES IN VUCA ENVIRONMENT.

VUCA & Education: Dr. A Senthil Kumaran, Principal Counsellor& Head – Education Excellence, CII Institute of Quality spoke of the dire need to invest in ‘People & Process’ and to “Stop Teaching; Start Reaching” – for building and improving learning in classroom; he also shared a formula: 4A (Awareness, Assessment, Acceptance, Attitude) + 2I (Institution & Individual) = C (Change).

VUCA & Inclusiveness: Mr. Sanjeev Rao, Managing Partner, SATTVA, observed that VUCA is the Indian way of life; he touched upon the ‘democratization of aspiration and information’ and the next 4 Billion – the have-nots – whose needs if left unaddressed will only invite repeat of recent incidence in France, Nigeria etc. only with greater frequency and larger and more severe consequences; hence mandatory 2% CSR should become voluntary 98% CSR. VUCA & IoT: Mohammed Hussain Naseem, Co-Founder & CEO, GetActive, 2mpower Health Management Services asked us to imagine “a chair that tells you how to sit properly”; “Google search that finds your wallet” – fairy tale? No reality. To a question from the audience, we were reminded that our grandmothers routinely talked to plants and everything around them before technology became part of our everyday life, now nanotech is once again making it possible to talk to things and make them act to our wishes; on fear of radiation – the view was that we rarely question or act on the fact that mobile towers, X-Ray machines and the mobile phone resting next to you is doing damage to our health, yet we fear the implications of nebulous nano sensors inside a blanket that help you sleep soundly.

PANEL DISCUSSION – CROSS-INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE ON VUCA

Moderator: Mr. Samuel Selvakumar, Corporate Advisor and Social Entrepreneur stated that “Human ingenuity will take care of any adverse effect of double-edged technology which is always a concern”; he shared his experience in the telecom industry which was born in VUCA and continues to this day, and has survived and will continue to flourish – because for every problem there is a bold and imaginative entrepreneur with a solution.
VUCA &Emergency Services: Mr. Ravindran Balakrishnan, Sr. Finance Director, International SOS response to a question on emergency measures: “Travel tracker helps evacuation of key executives faced with unexpected situations”.

VUCA &BPS: Mr. Sudipto Mazumder; Associate Vice President, WBPS – Solutions & Business Transformation, Wipro, spoke of power of social technology – the Egypt Uprising – FB for scheduling; Twitter for coordinating; YouTube to show the world – not quite what it was designed for but applied imaginatively in a VUCA environment; Business Process Service – brings predictability to an unpredictable world by nature of its structure and the ability to build trust, confidence and the right perception with clients.

VUCA &BPS: Mr. Sudipto Mazumder; Associate Vice President, WBPS – Solutions & Business Transformation, Wipro, spoke of power of social technology – the Egypt Uprising – FB for scheduling; Twitter for coordinating; YouTube to show the world – not quite what it was designed for but applied imaginatively in a VUCA environment; Business Process Service – brings predictability to an unpredictable world by nature of its structure and the ability to build trust, confidence and the right perception with clients.

VUCA & Content Marketing: Mr Peter Yorke, CEO, Yorke Communications in his response to questions from the audience said, “When things go wrong be fast to apologise and fix the backend for good to avoid repeat”; also “Publishing content is not one person or organization’s prerogative – it is an open house – managing it efficiently is the new VUCA challenge.

VUCA & Media: Mr. Kartik Iyer, Co-Founder & CEO, Happy Creative Services, explained the strategy behind two disruptive businesses – Flipkart and Ola – through their launch TV commercials “No kidding; No worries” and “Chalo Niklo” to address business issues of trust in online purchase in case of Flipkart, and promising without promising (that you will get a cab when you want it) in case of Ola – and for Ola it took three years for the communication to actually role as the consumer experience had first to be perfected.

Valedictory – Guest of Honour: Dr Sandeep Shastri, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Jain University, impressed upon the delegates to “Work with Passion”; “Lead with Compassion”; “Achieve with Conviction”; in context, he shared the story of Mr Narayana Murthy, Co-Founder and ex-Chairman Infosys along with personal anecdotes of helping draft the constitution of South Sudan for which his words were played back to him on a plaque, “I promise …” with respect to the official language for the country which was to be English with 10-year hiatus for switching from Arabic which till then was the official language.

Chief Guest – Dr B.T. Venkatesh, Controller of Examinations, Jain University also spoke of the tremendous effort that has gone behind the conference and complimented the organizers and reflected on the need for such debates, discussion and forums to stay in tune with the times especially for an educational institution providing talent to industry and leadership to organizations and society.

Chief Guest – Dr B.T. Venkatesh, Chief Guest – Dr B.T. Venkatesh, Controller of Examinations, Jain University also spoke of the tremendous effort that has gone behind the conference and complimented the organizers and reflected on the need for such debates, discussion and forums to stay in tune with the times especially for an educational institution providing talent to industry and leadership to organizations and society

Doctoral Paper Presentation judged by Dr MM Bagali of Jain University & Dr Vinod Murti of iNurture Education Solutions provided pointed advice to the presenters and declared the results of best paper presentations.

Vote of Thanks was given by Dr Vasu B A, Centre Head, SCMS Jain University, a visionary – who provided the direction and spearheaded all the arrangement, including leading a legion of people without whom such endeavours cannot succeed – all of whom were thanked and facilitated A parallel conference on “Rethinking Language Teaching” was also organised focussing on the ‘English Vs. Mother Tongue’ debate.

Overview – Rethinking Language Teaching – was provided by Dr Thriyambaka S, Head, Dept of English , SCMS, Jain University, who elaborated on the purpose of the parallel conference: to debate strategies for preservation of languages.

Keynote Speaker – Rethinking Language Teaching – Dr Vivek Dhareshwar, Head, Bangalore Human Sciences Initiatives, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology emphasized the need for languages a) unveil the world to the reader, b) be a source of creativity, c) be learnt voluntarily and not imposed, d) not be a source of identity that differentiates and discriminates, notwithstanding the ‘wisdom’ of creating states on linguistic grounds.

source: twitter.com